Recent image forming apparatuses are installed with a variety of image quality adjusting functions in order to meet various user's demands for image quality. More specifically, for example, a variety of image quality adjusting functions are offered; an image quality mode adjusting function for adjusting to an image quality mode suitable for the type of document, a sharpness adjusting function for adjusting edge enhancement of an image, an image density adjusting function for adjusting the density of an image, a ground color adjusting function for adjusting the density matched to the ground color of a document, etc.
In the image forming apparatuses of this kind, a large amount of printed materials against a user's intention are produced if there is an inappropriate part in information about image quality adjustment, when a user is intending to make multiple copies of a printed material with combinations of a plurality of image quality adjusting functions. Thus, an image forming apparatus having a test print function of printing only one copy first as a test has been known.
As an example of the image forming apparatus having such a test print function, there has been proposed an art of creating and outputting test print images that show each effect of a selected plurality of image processings by actual examples into a single page, letting a user select a preferred image quality from the output images and controlling the image processings based on the result (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,057).
In the foregoing patent literature, however, it is not disclosed or suggested at all that a plurality of images having been performed with image processings related to variations of image quality adjusting elements such as sharpness, image density and the like are laid out into a single page to carry out a test print, as focusing on one image quality mode having been selected from among a plurality of image quality modes provided in advance according to the type of document such as text mode, photo mode, text/photo mode containing both text and photographs, etc.